


As You Wish

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Date, Fluff, for Fitzsimmons secret santa on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 16:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2818796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz has a date with Jemma Simmons and an action plan. Now all he needs is a candle and the courage to see it through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As You Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AthenaMuze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaMuze/gifts).



> This is a gift for upsidedownhappyland (AthenaMuze) on Tumblr, as part of the Fitzsimmons Secret Santa Exchange.

It was a curse. It was really, truly a curse. Even if other people laughed when he told them about it. Leopold Fitz was perpetually incapable of finding a scented candle when he needs one, and it was a genuine _problem_.

The first time had been a few weeks after he had been partnered up with Simmons for an assignment. He'd barely been able to talk to her at first, too painfully aware of the fact that she was brilliant and beautiful and just generally Jemma Simmons, and so he'd put on a heavy pair of noise-canceling headphones—for safety, he claimed—and only communicated with her through notes for the first day and a half. But then a idiot working in their lab had nearly dropped a dangerous neurotoxin on their workstation and he'd had to say something. They'd been friends almost instantly after that, realizing that together they were twice as smart, and she'd promptly taken the fact that they were friends to mean that she could dissect things in their lab. Dead things. Dead things that she left next to his lunch.

He'd combed through every cabinet and cupboard in the lab in search of anything that would dispel the smell and, after half an hour of searching with a clothespin clipped to his nose, had finally given up and sulked outside the lab for the rest of the day. She'd solemnly given him a scented candle the next day and had only gotten halfway through giving it to him before breaking down into giggles. He didn't mind, because he'd started to realize that the sound of Jemma Simmons laughing was kind of wonderful.

The second time had been moving into their apartment, after they'd graduated from the Academy and started at Sci-Ops. They spent all their time together anyway, so living together was just the natural, purely platonic next step. Or at least that's what they had told other people. Watching Jemma fuss over their bookshelves and decorate the fridge with an entire periodic table of magnets, smiling over her shoulder at him when she caught him looking at her, he'd felt something swell inside his chest that felt completely un-platonic. Something that made him want to lift her up onto their pristine kitchen counters and kiss her until they were both breathless with it. Then, luckily, she'd dropped one of her specimen jars and in the resulting chaos and bad smell and his hopeless search for one of the scented candles he was sure he'd packed, he'd managed to push it to the back of his mind.

The third time had been just before the Chitauri, when she was happily cutting apart a body and he'd complained as loudly as possible. Like always, scented candles had been nowhere to be found. But afterward, he'd thought that he'd let her cut up as many things as she wanted as long as she stayed.

The fourth time was right now (a sunny afternoon in the middle of July) and it was definitely the worst, he thought. Because tonight was the night that he's going on an actual real date with Jemma Simmons—and yes, he was still going to call it a date even though it's taking place entirely inside the Playground—and he had an action plan and the scented candle was a major part of it. Only now, the scented candle had vanished and he wasn't panicking but he was _definitely_ panicking. Because there was a little voice in the back of his head telling him that this was much too good to be true and at some point, the universe was going to inform him that this had all been a giant joke.

“Trip,” he shouted. “Do you think Amazon delivers scented candles?”

“Amazon is evil,” A voice that sounded like Skye shouted back. She and Trip had become entirely too invested in his and Jemma's relationship. (Not that he could technically call it a relationship yet, he thought. Could he?) They were probably plotting to watch him and Jemma right now through the surveillance cameras or something.

“Skye's right, man. Why do you need a scented candle?” Trip emerged from the kitchen, holding a platter of sandwiches that looked more delicious than any sandwich had a right to be. Fitz had discovered that Trip is a surprisingly good cook, especially when Skye's around and badgering him to make his grandmother's lasagna.

“For tonight with Jemma. It's a key part of the plan—step three, sub-step twelve,” he said grumpily.

“Ohh, sub-step twelve,” Skye waggled her eyebrows dramatically at him, following behind Trip with a six-pack. “When does this date start tonight anyway?”

“Six,” he replied and stuck his head under the couch. There was a 4.37% chance that the candle might have rolled under there.

“Fitz, you have four hours. Relax,” Skye said as she perched on the breakfast bar.

“Exactly. I only have four hours.” He would have glared at her, but his head was currently wedged between the floor and the couch and he's finding it a little hard to move. His words came out as a mumble, muffled by the cushions above him, and Trip had to tug on his legs to get him out. Fitz landed on his stomach, sprawled across the floor, and slowly thumped his head against the carpet. He was still on step one and his plan was already going all wrong.

“You might not want to do that on your date,” Skye suggested “Unless Jemma has a thing for submissive men. Does she have a thing for submissive men?”

“How should I know?” Fitz groaned from the floor.

“Didn't you guys have a thing at the Academy?” Skye asked and Fitz shook his head. “At Sci-Ops?” Another head shake. “One drunken kiss somewhere along the line?” Skye sighed. “I just lost a very expensive bet.”

“Jemma didn't...I wasn't...we just didn't, all right?” Fitz wanted to melt into the floor. But then he remembered that they weren't at the Academy anymore and yes, he's still occasionally terrified but at least he's not terrified of this anymore. He knew that seeing Jemma Simmons smile was one of the most spectacular sights in the known universe and the thought of her smile and her laugh and the look of sheer delight on her face when she peers through the microscope made him want to melt into the floor in an entirely different way. He rolled over and grinned up at the ceiling, already thinking four hours in the future, and distantly he heard Skye call him a sap.

The next four hours were both the shortest and longest of his life. He ran around the Playground like he was possessed, tinkering with the TV until he's convinced it's at maximum sound and picture quality, checking frantically on the flowers he bought her to make sure that they were still fresh, and staring at his wardrobe with a growing sense of dread. He even managed to find a “Christmas spice” candle with Agent Koenig's help, buried deep in a closet, and Christmas spice may not be the most romantic thing ever but it's better than the fluorescents, he reasoned. He thought. He hoped? Leopold Fitz may have been a genius, but he really had no idea what he's doing.

The last date he went on had been years ago, at Sci-Ops, with a pretty physicist that Jemma had set him up with, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. He'd talked about Jemma for half the night, the physicist had stormed out in the middle of their appetizers, leaving him blinking in confusion at the bread basket, and he'd still been too oblivious to realize that he was in love with Jemma. There'd been some other dates at the Academy and Sci-Ops, also set up by Jemma and ranging from decent to catastrophic, and one memorable drunken hookup at a graduation party, but nothing...nothing that mattered like this did, Fitz admitted.

Then his alarm went off, reminding him that he only had ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Jemma outside her bunk and he practically leapt off his bed to rummage through his closet. Dark jeans, light blue button-down shirt that took him a good three minutes to button up, fingers shaking with nerves and excitement. He was halfway out the door before he realized that he probably needed a tie and he groaned. It was silly, really. He was fine in the lab but somehow he still couldn't tie a tie. Fitz found one anyway, dark blue with tiny white polka dots, and draped it around his neck, hoping that maybe he could get Trip to help him.

There was a knock on his door, one long rap and two short ones, and he froze in front of his mirror. That was Jemma's knock and her voice drifting through the door as she asked him to let her in. “I know I'm early,” she said quickly. “But I couldn't sit around my bunk anymore and so I thought that I could just—Oh. Hi.”

He pulled the door open so hastily that she nearly toppled in, stumbling against him, and his arms went around her almost automatically as he pulled her upright against his chest. Then she was staring up at him, amber eyes wide and lips barely parted, and there was a moment that was, well, a _moment_. But then he pulled back and sheepishly held out his tie to her. “Can you?” he trailed off, knowing that she would know what he meant, knowing how incredibly amazing it was that they knew how to complete each other again.

“Of course.” She looped it around his neck, tied a perfect double Windsor, and stepped back to slip her hand in his. “Shall we?”

“Westward ho!” he replied and immediately wanted to rewind time and stop himself from saying that because he sounded like someone from a cheesy Western and the living room wasn't really west anyway, more sort of north-northwest-ish and he—Then Jemma smiled at him and everything flew out of his head.  
***  
How do you politely tell someone that you'd like to push him up against a wall, kiss him senseless, and have your wicked way with him? It was an important scientific question and Jemma Simmons was determined to find the solution.

She kept on glancing sideways at him as they walked along the hallway, registering the warmth of his long fingers wound through hers and the way that he kept on tilting towards her, so slowly that she didn't think he knew he was doing it. Then he managed to slide his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, hand splayed across her back and hip bumping into hers and then she was thinking about how his hands would feel on the rest of her body and what it would be like to have his hips rock into hers and the fact that his hair was growing back in quite nicely, enough for her to run her hands through it and pull him down to her, slant her mouth over his and run her tongue over his bottom lip until he--

“Jemma? We're here.” His voice broke her out of her daydreams and then she was blushing. Again. Last week, she had nearly dropped a valuable sample because she'd gotten too absorbed watching him work on one of the DWARFS, fingers nimbly dancing around its delicate parts. It was like all the teenage hormones she didn't have time for when she actually was a teenager had come back with a vengeance. (As completely scientifically inaccurate as that sentence was.) Her thoughts seemed to be insistently preoccupied with his mouth and his hands and other pertinent body parts, she felt like she'd swallowed a barrel of butterflies whenever she was around him, and if it hadn't felt so lovely, she thought that she might have gone mad by now.

Fitz tugged her to a stop and she looked around the living room of the Playground, now draped with fairy lights that cast a soft white light across every surface. The smell of Indian food was wafting across the room, the couch was piled high with blankets and pillows, there were roses resting in a vase on the coffee table, and underneath the Indian food, she could faintly smell...Christmas spice? “Fitz,” she said. “Why do we have a Christmas scented candle in July?”

“Atmosphere?” he offered. “It was that or citronella. If you don't like it, I can--”

“I think I might love it,” she said firmly and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Now, you should give me a tour of this mysterious, top-secret, utterly unrecognizable date location.”

“Well, that's a couch,” he blinked at her, confused. Then he tilted his head to one side, then the other, and shook his hand out, grinning mischievously at her, and she knew that it had clicked inside his head.“Well, its code name is a couch. But really, it's the First Annual Fitzsimmons Pillow Fort. Level seven clearance and up only. Tested for structural integrity and maximum fluffiness.”

“And that?” she asked, pointing to the table where the Indian food was steaming away.

“The Table of Deliciousness. Arranged by some of our top agents, who crafted an elaborate cover story to go pick up the food and kept hot with something that I've been working on after-hours. Patent pending,” he said smugly. “I couldn't remember what you liked best, so I got a little of everything.” She went over to look and saw that the table was covered with at least three layers of containers, stacked on top of each other like a particularly elaborate game of Jenga. “I didn't exactly plan how we were going to eat everything,” he added quickly.

“Picnic, my dear Watson,” she said lightly, spreading a blanket out across the floor and grabbing as many containers as she could. Someone, probably Skye, had drawn smiley faces on each and every container and given some of them little speech bubbles saying things like “I ship it!”. The rest of them appeared to be giving her very Skye-like smirks and suggestive winks.

“I guess you can be Sherlock this time,” he grumbled.

“I'm always Sherlock. I look awfully good in a deerstalker. Especially with nothing else on.” Jemma heard his jaw drop from several feet away and bent down to arrange the containers and hide her blush. She hadn't flirted properly with anyone in years, and she thought her success was rather remarkable, considering. Fitz looked like he couldn't decide whether to be scandalized or intrigued, as the tips of his ears turned pink and he kept on sneaking sideways glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking, eyes flickering up and down and getting wider and wider, like a little boy told that yes, he could have a second helping of dessert and a monkey and a trip to Disneyworld _right now_. But then Fitz carefully picked up two of the containers, stacking them both in his good hand, and went to sit across from her on the blanket, a tower of Indian food between them. Jemma barely kept herself from pouting at him. They'd been nervous around each other even after he'd come back to the lab, apologizing every time they got within half a foot of each other, and after she'd told him that she felt the same, blurting it the moment before he got sent off on a mission with Hunter, every touch had seemed to be a serious matter of international importance. He'd kissed her once or twice, a quick brush of lips against hers, but nothing more than that, as if he still wasn't sure that it was allowed. She had to yet to find a way to tell him that, as far as she was concerned, everything was allowed. “Do you want to come around?” she asked softly. “I can hardly see you through the containers.”

“I'd, um, I'd like to. If that's all right with you?” he added quickly.

“It is a date, Fitz. I think at least part of it should involve being able to see each other,” she teased. He jumped up so quickly that he nearly brought the entire tower of containers down with him, and scrambled around the edge of the blanket to sit next to her, close enough that his knee brushed against hers. Jemma inched over until their thighs were touching and let her head drop on his shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief when he let himself relax into her and slid his arm around her waist again. He was wonderfully warm wherever he pressed against her, leaving a trail of heat across her back and down the side of her leg. So she cuddled into him, shamelessly seeking more heat—she'd worn a dress for what felt like the first time in years, a light blue sundress that left her arms and shoulders bare, and the Playground's overactive air conditioning was already taking its toll. And giving her a convenient excuse to cuddle up to Fitz.

“How do you plan to eat like that?” He brought his other hand up to stroke tentatively at her hair and Jemma practically purred.

“Just steal food off your plate, of course,” she informed him and tilted her head up to look at him directly. His mouth was so close, she could just-- “If that's all right with you?”

“You were going to do it anyway. Let go for a minute?” He leaned forward to inspect the containers, shrugged and gave up after about eight, and just started piling a little of everything onto their plate. While he frowned down at the food, Jemma scrambled up onto the couch—correction, the pillow fort—and grabbed a huge armful of blankets to drape over herself, until all that was left was a small space for her eyes and nose. The temperature was rapidly approaching Arctic levels in the Playground and she seriously contemplated calling Skye and asking her to hack into the air conditioning, especially since Skye had spent the past two weeks bragging about her control over the temperature inside the base. She'd even claimed that she could alter the temperature completely from room to room...Jemma's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Skye had been dropping hints all week about hoping that “the date that we've all been waiting for for, like, forever” went well and Jemma wouldn't have put it past her to turn the air-conditioning all the way up and force them to cuddle.

“I was cold, so I made a nest,” she explained and held the corner of one blanket open. “Come join me?”

“You have to let me fix it first,” he said firmly and tugged on the corner of one blanket. It promptly slid off her and landed in a heap on the floor, somehow managing to twist itself around one table leg. “See! Absolutely no structural integrity.”

“I didn't know that piles of blankets could have structural integrity.” She dimpled up at him and wondered if this counted as flirting too. Maybe talking about structural integrity was what engineers considered flirting.

“Well, ours will.” He handed her the plate and immediately started constructing an elaborate contraption made out of blankets, chairs, the arm of the sofa, five fluffy pillows, half of a miniature model helicopter, and the plastic container that had previously held the chicken korma. Three and a half minutes later, they had a warm and spacious blanket fort, which smelled faintly of Indian, and Jemma had come up with five different ways to turn Fitz into her own personal pillow. She'd barely started shivering, wrapping her arms around herself and trying to make her teeth chatter, when he held out his hand to her and let her tuck herself against his side.

Dinner was a little awkward at first, as their forks kept on clanking against each other and she happened to brush against a rather sensitive place and make him whimper as she reached across him to get the naan, but they soon settled into a routine just as easy as their one in the lab. Yes, she was incredibly aware of each and every place that they were touching, but Jemma Simmons prided herself on being a scientific professional and, if they'd once conducted a successful conversation about the technical details of building a time travel machine while doing the ropes course during their field assessments, they could certainly talk about miniaturizing the night-night gun while barely touching. Then he'd proposed that they call it the nap-nap gun, she'd actually _giggled_ , and she remembered that they'd failed their field assessments in a rather spectacular manner. Or, in other words, they were doomed.

He just kept on looking at her, all big blue eyes and a shy smile, more amazement in his face than the first time they'd made one of their devices work, and she didn't think anyone had ever looked at her like she was something this precious and _god_ , she only hoped that she was looking at him the same way back. Jemma almost reached over to kiss him, only to find that he'd started to crawl away from her to clean up the containers and she had to settle for brushing her lips against his cheek. “Skye obtained a bunch of movies for us—don't ask how,” he said, poking his head back into the blanket fort. “What do you feel like watching?”

“ _Princess Bride_ , if you have it?” she asked absently.

“As you wish.” It took her a minute to realize what he'd said and then she sprang to her feet, letting the blankets fall to the ground, and was standing in front of Fitz in five quick steps. The remote fell to the ground with a soft clunk when he turned around and saw her standing there.

“As you wish,” she repeated. And then, because she couldn't wait one minute longer, she firmly wound his tie around her wrist, pulled him to her, and kissed him with everything she had. He squeaked, lost his balance,grabbed for her, and sent them falling, twisting every which way until they finally toppled backwards on the sofa. His back hit the arm of the sofa, she accidentally bit him, his knee crashed against hers, and his “ow” was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire base. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, scrambling to sit up on top of him.

“Apart from the throbbing pain in my back, I'm fine,” he grumbled. “You surprised me.”

“Surprise kisses are supposed to be quirky and charming and romantic,” she informed him. “I did research on it. Usually, they're made much more effective by the addition of rain, dramatic sprints through airports, and/or moonlight, but none of those were readily available so I was forced to improvise and, as you know...” she winced, remembering the expression on May's face when she'd asked May how to hide a body. She blamed the Academy for that one: the more time she spent in the field, the more it became clear that the curriculum had neglected whole swathes of information. Subterfuge, concealing bodies, making friends and influencing people...“I don't do very well with improvisation.”

“Because you excel at preparation?” he smiled shyly up at her, with the look that he always got on his face when he was about to answer a particularly complicated question—half eager anticipation of getting it right, half hope that he really would.

“Exactly. So, in the name of preparation,” she leaned down, bracketing his hips with her own, and hovering close enough so her hair brushed against his cheek. “Leopold Fitz, if I decided to kiss you again, how will you react?”

“I...I probably wouldn't object.” She couldn't help smiling at that, because it was so utterly _Fitz_ , and so she closed the final few inches between them and kissed him again, softly and sweetly and carefully. He sighed into her, warm and undoubtedly hers, and kissed her back just as softly. Usually, Fitz was tightly wound, all tense muscle and fidgeting hands, but he seemed to have gone completely relaxed and boneless against her as he wound his arms around her waist to pull her closer and hummed happily into her mouth. He nearly whimpered when she pulled away, only to sigh happily when she tugged him upright on the couch and scrambled into his lap.

“Shut your eyes,” Jemma whispered and he did, tipping his head back against the couch cushions and waiting patiently for her. Her mouth went to his neck first, carefully searching out the spots that made his breath speed up and his hands curl tighter around her hips, and worked its way up across his jaw and his cheeks. She dropped kisses across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes and nipped at his ear with her teeth and memorized every inch of his face, except his mouth, with her own. Before all this, back at the Academy when she spent most of her days across a lab table from him, she'd thought that she knew his face better than her own. But now, she knew differently—for her, the only way to know him properly was to map him out, like an explorer in a strange new land, until she could close her eyes and feel him there with her even when he wasn't. During the nine worst days of her life, she'd tried to remember what it had felt like to have his arms around her and for a brief, terrifying moment, she'd forgotten. _Never again_ , she'd vowed, and although it had taken her months to figure out what those words had meant for her and Fitz, she was going to memorize all the ways that she loved him now.

Finally, she ghosted her lips across his and he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “this is how it ends”.

“Delayed gratification, Fitz. There've been loads of studies--” She never got the chance to tell him about the studies because because Fitz was kissing her with the kind of enthusiasm she'd never even seen him display for monkeys and she'd never been happier to be interrupted. His hands were in her hair, his mouth pressed against hers as he slowly deepened the kiss and swept his tongue into her mouth, and she responded with equal enthusiasm, wrapping herself around him as tightly as he could. Everything around her was magnified a hundred times over, clear and sharp and wonderfully real: the hammering of his heart under her palm and the gasp of her breath as he moved down to kiss her neck thundered in her ears, the fabric of his shirt felt impossibly soft under her other hand, and his skin felt even better when she tugged his shirt out of his trousers and splayed her hand across his back.

“Your hands are cold,” he mumbled against her neck and then, when she moved her hand back up to rest lightly on his shoulder. “That didn't mean I wanted you to move.”

“You should probably keep me warm then.” she whispered back and pulled at the knot of his tie until it came undone. “Is this all right?”

“Very much so.” He swallowed—loudly—when she flicked the first button of his shirt open. “But maybe we should, um, change location? Skye's already got blackmail material on me from that time my sweater brushed against Lola and from that time I drank some of May’s special tea blend, and from that time I that I’d estimated there were about 36 different shades of brown in your eyes...” He stopped abruptly, turning bright red.

“Mine is closer,” she said firmly and stood up, reaching over to the coffee table to grab the candle. “For atmosphere.” Fitz laughed at that and let her pull him up and along with her, carefully avoiding the candle as he leaned in to kiss her. He kept on casting nervous glances at it as they made their way back, muttering something about how a romantic atmosphere wasn’t supposed to be hazardous, and Jemma giggled--only Fitz could have finally gotten his scented candle and promptly regretted it. 

It took them twice as long as it should have to make it down the hallway to her bunk, partly because she insisted on stopping every three feet to kiss him and partly because he insisted on putting the candle down on a flame-resistant surface whenever she did. When they finally got there, she keyed in the code, set down the candle before he could say anything else about flameproofing and turned to face him as she held the door open, suddenly shy. “So this is it?”

“This is it,” he said and took a deep breath. “I’m all yours, Jemma, if you’ll allow it.”

“I probably wouldn’t object,” she replied slowly, her smile getting impossibly wider, and reached out to pull him inside her bunk. She kissed him as the door shut behind them, kissed him like she would get to do it a hundred thousand more times, like she had always known they would end up here, him and her and all the time in the world to kiss him again. 

And finally, eyes on him all the while, Jemma leaned over and blew out the candle.


End file.
